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I’m reading the new book, Noah: The Real Story, my interest piqued on the topic in large part due to all the chatter about the upcoming movie, Noah, opening March 28.

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The movie has a blockbuster budget of $130 million and features a stellar cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins, and Emma Watson.

Very few people have read the script or seen the movie, but the book I’m reading includes a summary by movie critic Brian Godawa of a script he read in the fall of 2013.

Potential spoiler alert…

So in that version of the script there was an infanticide element. Quoting from the book:

Noah decides the only reason God preserved him and his family is to make sure the animals on the ark return to the earth safely. If mankind disappeared, “it would be a better world.” His family should have no more births so that humans will eventually die out and then “the creatures of the earth, the world itself, shall be safe.” But one of his daughters-in-law is pregnant. If it is a boy, Noah will let it live; but if it is a girl, it will be killed. The woman gives birth to twin girls and Noah sets out to kill them both while the animals on the ark help pin down his family, but he is too weak to carry out his task. ‘I can’t do it,’ he says to himself and to God. 'I am sorry.'”

This, of course, places God at the most extreme end of environmental whacko-ness, upends His plan of salvation, and reverses the real close of the Noah story, wherein God tells him, “be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it” ~ Genesis 9:7.

So we shall see if that blasphemous plotline made the final cut. I’ve read Paramount Pictures is quite nervous about the Christian reaction to the movie. At this point, from what I’ve read and seen, it should be:

One viewer, who declined to give his name because Paramount required him to sign a nondisclosure agreement, echoed the sentiments of others by criticizing the depiction of Noah as a “crazy, irrational, religious nut” who is fixated on modern-day problems like overpopulation and environmental degradation.

Russell Crowe didn’t help:

View the trailer here.

Reprinted with permission from Jill Stanek